


Serendipity

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Vignette, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-10
Updated: 2006-03-10
Packaged: 2019-02-02 12:15:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12726444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: Reading the note, Jack ponders Daniel's mistake.





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

I held the piece of paper that had turned my world upside down. Just a few words hastily scribbled yet everything in my well-ordered life was shattered. And how exactly did I feel about that? That's the million dollar question for sure. I should feel unnerved, afraid, uncertain, yet I feel none of these things, all I feel is ...liberated.

Because of his ...what ...mistake? He had been distracted, presumably by the revelation that he scrawled on that piece of paper and so I was now in possession of one of his most private thoughts. A thought that I recognised was meant to be written in his journal. A thought I was never meant to see.

He'd always kept a journal for as long as I'd known him and I expect he'd kept one for many years before that. I remember the first night when he came back from Abydos and I brought him home with me like a lost waif. We talked for hours, Daniel nursing his one beer because he needed to do something with his hands. Finally he went to bed, exhausted and I was positive he would go out like a light. A couple of hours later I had to go to the bathroom, I'd had a lot more than one beer.

His door was slightly ajar and I saw the glow from the bedside lamp. I peeked around the door and there he was scribbling furiously in his journal. I pushed the door open and asked him why he wasn't sleeping; surely his notes could wait until the morning. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes and said that he needed to get it all down while it was fresh. I said something about it being too painful and he gave me that small smile of his and said that even the pain shouldn't be forgotten.

With a sad smile I left him then and as the years passed I came to understand that Daniel embraced life in all its forms, the good and the bad, the joy and the pain. The trouble was that he accepted too readily what life threw at him as if it was deserved. He'd learned to tolerate loss and pain so early in his life that he no longer fought against it when it reared its ugly head. He'd fight tooth and nail for a stranger but for himself ... His life as a foster child had much to answer for I believe.

So now I wondered what he would do with that message that had been meant for his journal. A thought placed somewhere safe, somewhere only he knew about, yet here it was in my possession.

Would he simply have written it down, mourned that it couldn't be and merely turned the page? Would he possibly have considered telling me, believing I couldn't share his feelings but thinking I had the right to know, he had the right to tell me? Was it even possible for him to tell me and _hope_ that maybe I could see something in him worth loving?

Questions to which I didn't know answers, I could guess though. Daniel never thought of himself as worthy; never saw what others did.

And now what the hell should I do? Pretend I never saw it, let him keep his secret? Let him wrap his arms around himself and wallow in his loneliness while I sit alone in my house and dream of him? That's my problem you see. I might rail at Daniel but was I any better? I hadn't told him of my feelings and I'd realised them a lot sooner than today at 10:17 in the Briefing Room.

Why should two men be lonely when each wanted and needed the other, why should I allow rules and regulations that have no bearing on what really matters separate us? I have cared ... no, I have _loved_ him for so long it had become a habit to smile softly and let him go his way because it was what he seemed to need.

I should have told him long ago, I should have pulled him from his self-imposed quietude which was only his way of hiding from the pain of life. I should've shown him that the pain was balanced by the pleasure. He has known far too little of that in his life and if anyone deserved better Daniel did.

His happy accident - there is a word for that, I know there is. Daniel would know it. I smiled to myself. Daniel was my happy accident, my ...serendipity - that was it! What was I trying to say? Oh yeah, his ... mistake in giving me that piece of paper was my serendipity and now I was going to make sure that Daniel had all the facts to hand. Isn't that what scientists do, look at the all the information available and make an informed decision?

I reached for the phone.

"Daniel, would you come to my office? There's something we have to talk about."

FIN


End file.
